William Hazlitt
William Hazlitt
William Hazlittwas an English writer, drama and literary critic, painter, social commentator, and philosopher. He is now considered one of the greatest critics and essayists in the history of the English language, placed in the company of Samuel Johnson and George Orwell. He is also acknowledged as the finest art critic of his age. Despite his high standing among historians of literature and art, his work is currently little read and mostly out of print...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionCritic
Date of Birth10 April 1778
stars reality sky
The love of fame is too high and delicate a feeling in the mind to be mixed up with realities, it is a solitary abstraction. * * * A name "fast anchored in the deep abyss of time" is like a star twinkling in the firmament, cold, silent, distant, but eternal and sublime; and our transmitting one to posterity is as if we should contemplate our translation to the skies.
betrayal secret violent
Violent antipathies are always suspicious, and betray a secret affinity.
gratitude business corporations
They [corporations] feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, nor goodwill.
silence say-anything daring
The silence of a friend commonly amounts to treachery. His not daring to say anything in our behalf implies a tacit censure.
class lowest
But of all footmen the lowest class is literary footmen.
harmony hours conceit
There is a softness and a harmony in the words and in the thought unparalleled. Of all conceits it is surely the most classical. "I count only the hours that are serene.".
decision soul
The soul of dispatch is decision.
honesty earnest eloquence
Honesty is one part of eloquence. We persuade others by being in earnest ourselves.
thinker talkers fluent
The most fluent talkers or most plausible reasoners are not always the justest thinkers.
greatness men people
Those people who are always improving never become great. Greatness is an eminence, the ascent to which is steep and lofty, and which a man must seize on at once by natural boldness and vigor, and not by patient, wary steps.
reform succeed triumph
It is essential to the triumph of reform that it should never succeed.
life may way
Human life may be regarded as a succession of frontispieces. The way to be satisfied is never to look back.
government abuse mind
Shall I faint, now that I have poured out the spirit of my mind to the world, and treated many subjects with truth, with freedom, with power, because I have been followed with one cry of abuse ever since for not being a Government tool?
lasts life-is pleasure
The last pleasure in life is the sense of discharging our duty.